How a $15 Minimum Wage Went from ‘Extreme’ to Enacted

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/05/how-15-minimum-wage-went-extreme-enacted

What once was considered “pie in the sky” is slowly becoming law. In New York, state legislators just agreed to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour, with the full effect beginning in New York City by December 2018. California just passed a compromise raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. New Jersey and the District are planning to move similar laws. After New York and California, nearly 1 in 5 (18 percent) in the U.S. workforce will be on the path to $15 an hour.

How did this reform go from being scorned as “extreme” to being enacted? Consensus politicians don’t champion it. Pundits and chattering heads tend to ignore it. Many liberal economists deride it as too radical. The idea moved only because workers and allies organized and demanded the change.

Three years ago, fast-food workers walked off the job in what began the “fight for $15 and a union.” With the federal government as the largest low-wage employer, federal contract workers demonstrated repeatedly outside the Pentagon, Congress and the White House, demanding executive action under the banner of a “Good Jobs Nation.”

Progressive politicians added their voices. In Seattle, Kshama Sawant, an engineer and economist running under the banner of Socialist Alternative party, won a seat on the city council in 2013. She made a $15 minimum wage a centerpiece of her campaign and pushed it when in office. The Service Employees International Union, one of America’s largest unions; business leaders such as Nick Hanauer; and political leaders such as Seattle Mayor Ed Murray helped build the coalition needed to get it done. Now wages in Seattle are headed to $15. And in SeaTac, the airport district that passed a $15 minimum wage in a referendum, the wage is in effect now.

In New York, insurgent mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio made raising the minimum wage central to his campaign. He and the Working Families Party joined with striking low-wage workers, labor and community groups, and city council members. Zephyr Teachout’s surprisingly strong challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) put pressure on him to act.

[Hoyt]

1. Sadly, too "extreme" to be enacted at national level and probably my area. The way it's structured

in these states, pretty much mirrors Clinton's plan of $12/hour in less costly areas, and more -- even more than $15 in some cases -- in higher cost areas. In any event, good thing to see some states taking action.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Bernie Sanders is so right! Change happens from the bottom up...

...and never from the top down. We need to organize and demand change--just as smart and courageous workers do, and as unions do--or it will never happen. Sanders' campaign is teaching all of us that, all over again. Some knew it already. The Occupy protestors. The Seattle '99 protesters. And the workers and unions mentioned above. Black Lives Matter and the civil rights workers of Bernie Sanders' youth, and others. Change for the good never comes from the top. It always comes from the bottom. But some have forgotten this, or never knew it. Together, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.

[skepticscott]

3. How did it go from "extreme" to "enacted"?

Simple..by pushing it into the future so that inflation renders it less of a real increase than it would have been if it were put in place today, and by not making cost of living adjustments to the minimum wages regular and mandatory in the future. That made it much more palatable to business interests, who know that it will be easier to kill attempted increases in the future.

The $15 an hour figure got bandied around so much that a lot of people treat it as some kind of holy grail, but there's nothing magical about it. Ask yourself why the same $15 an hour that was promised in 2012 in Washington is still considered adequate 10 years later in New York.

[JayhawkSD]

4. Same way Obama's "evolvement" on gay marriage happened.

The people affected by the issue browbeat him into sanity.